Awards

• Melody Hammond Is Named Technician Of The Year
• Prasad Receives Morley Award
• Schurig Is Winner Of 2004 Chirality Medal
• Nominations For 2005 Baekeland Award
• Canadian Green Chemistry Award To Paul Anastas

Melody Hammond Is Named Technician Of The Year

Melody A. Hammond, a chemical analysis technician at ConocoPhillips, Bartlesville, Okla., received the ACS Division of Chemical Technicians' 2004 National Chemical Technician Award at the 227th ACS national meeting in Anaheim, Calif. Robert Krystosek, division chair, presented the annual award, which is sponsored by S. C. Johnson & Son. Hammond is the 16th recipient of the award, which is given for technical and communication skills, safety, reliability, leadership, teamwork, publications, and presentations. Additional professional and community activities are considered.

Hammond's first 13 years with Phillips were spent in polymer research and business development, such as working with rubber in sheet and bulk molding compounds. This led to developing molding and testing conditions for aerospace applications and copper-laminated circuit board composites. In 1990, she transferred to the analytical services unit of Phillips and currently works in the chemical analysis area doing wet chemical analysis. Hammond is the coinventor/coauthor of one patent, and she has 14 presentations and publications.

Prasad Receives Morley Award

Paras N. Prasad, distinguished professor in the department of chemistry at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and Samuel P. Capen Chair, has been awarded the 2004 Morley Medal by the ACS Cleveland Section. The Morley Medal is given annually to a researcher who makes outstanding contributions to chemistry while residing in an area within a 250-mile radius of Cleveland.

The Morley Award Symposium and banquet were held on May 26 in Cleveland at John Carroll University. Prasad addressed the banquet with a talk entitled "Emerging Opportunities at the Interface of Nanochemistry, Photonics, and Biomedical Sciences."

Founder and executive director of SUNY Buffalo's Institute for Lasers, Photonics & Biophotonics, Prasad is widely recognized by the international community for seminal contributions to nonlinear optical effects and photonics. His work has provided guiding principles for the chemical design of nonlinear optical materials. Currently, Prasad is working in two emerging research areas: biophotonics and nanophotonics.

Schurig Is Winner Of 2004 Chirality Medal

Volker Schurig of the Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Tübingen, in Germany, has been selected as the recipient of the 2004 Chirality Medal of the Societa Chimica Italiana in recognition of his "outstanding achievements in the field of stereoisomer separation by means of chromatographic techniques." The medal will be presented at the 16th International Symposium on Chirality in New York City on July 11.

Schurig is internationally recognized for his pioneering work in the area of enantioselective chromatography, in particular for his studies on enantioselective complexation gas chromatography and for his work on the development of chiral stationary phases (for example, Chirasil-Metal, Chirasil-Dex) and their use in gas and liquid chromatography and electrophoretic separation techniques. In addition, Schurig's studies of the fundamentals and mechanisms underlying the enantioselective separation process have paved the way in many areas, most notably in the use of chromatography to study the dynamic interconversion of stereoisomers. Schurig's research is characterized by a highly fruitful combination of theory and experiment and has significantly influenced the many interdisciplinary fields where chirality is of great importance.

Nominations For 2005 Baekeland Award

The ACS North Jersey Section is soliciting nominations for the 2005 Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award. The award is sponsored by the Union Carbide subsidiary of Dow Chemical and consists of a gold medal and a $5,000 honorarium. The section presents the award every other year to commemorate the technical and industrial achievements of Baekeland and to encourage younger chemists to follow in his footsteps.

The award is given in recognition of accomplishments in pure or industrial chemistry to an American chemist who will be under the age of 40 as of Jan. 1, 2005. Nominations should include a letter describing the nominee's achievements, a brief biography, and a list of the nominee's more important publications. Renominations are encouraged. Please submit materials by Dec. 31. For further information, please contact Anne Kelly at anne.kelly@bms.com.

Canadian Green Chemistry Award To Paul Anastas

On May 21, Paul T. Anastas, of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and incoming director of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute, received the first Canadian Green Chemistry Medal at ceremonies at the Canada-U.S. Joint Workshop on Innovative Chemistry in Clean Media, held at McGill University, Montreal.

Anastas coined the term "green chemistry" and has defined the field as "the design of chemical products and processes that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances." This has been generally regarded as the beginning of the field of green chemistry as we know it today. Within the past decade, Anastas has been one of the most important figures in promoting and supporting the field of green chemistry both in the U.S and worldwide. The book "Green Chemistry: Theory & Practice" (Oxford University Press, 1998) and its 12 principles, which Anastas coauthored with John C. Warner, professor of chemistry at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, have been described as providing researchers of the field with a philosophical blueprint.

In Canada, Anastas helped to establish the Canadian Green Chemistry chapter. He gave the first public lecture on green chemistry sponsored by the Canadian chapter as well as providing letters of support.